


out of suffering, the strongest souls

by random_chick



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-11
Updated: 2015-02-11
Packaged: 2018-03-11 21:17:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3333185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/random_chick/pseuds/random_chick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rowan Abernathy has never been normal. She's okay with this, until she's not.</p>
<p>Until she falls into the middle of something much bigger than she is.</p>
<p>Until her life is changed forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	out of suffering, the strongest souls

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the spn_reversebang @ LJ

Rowan Abernathy had been different for as long as she could remember.

She’d had a knack for making friends from an early age -- mostly with people older than she was, because she’d just never been very good at making friends with people in her own age group. Kids had never really liked her, had always been just a little weirded out by her.

But more importantly, she’d always made friends with adults who were just a little… different. She couldn’t explain it, had never been able to explain it, but she tended to gravitate towards people who had a certain… intensity to them. She never thought twice about it, really. She never really thought about it at all, actually.

Because thinking about it made her wonder just how different from normal her life really was, and that wasn’t something she enjoyed thinking about.

Because again, she’d been different for as long as she could remember.

Hearing voices tended to do that to you, she’d quickly figured out. And she’d heard them from the time she was six years old.

She knew it wasn’t hearing voices as in schizophrenia, though. Not that she’d known that word at a young age, but when she’d gotten older she’d been quick to realize that no, it wasn’t that -- though she was positive other people wouldn’t have made such a distinction. (She’d also done plenty of research, _just_ in case.)

The first time she’d heard a voice, she’d been playing in the backyard at home. She’d heard it coming out of thin air, as if from nowhere. It hadn’t even scared her, because it’d been so nice to hear. It’d sounded… firm. Commanding. But not in a scary way, more in that concerned parent kind of way. Which had been nice, since her own 

The voices had come frequently after that, on the order of once or twice a month at first, and then over time it had evened out to once every couple of months and then for two years, they’d been gone entirely. Now that she was nearly twenty-six, though, they were coming more frequently again. She was scared by that, more scared than she wanted to admit, because the voices _had_ been going away. Had been gone, she thought. But now they were back.

And she didn’t know what that meant, only that it had to mean something.

It wasn’t until she moved into the long-term motel that she started to get an idea.

She’d met the guys… no, she hadn’t even really met them. She’d just seen them one day, about a week after she’d moved in. The tall guy, the guy with the scowl, and the guy in a trenchcoat. And something had drawn her to them. Specifically the one in the trenchcoat, but to the other two as well. There just seemed to be something about all three of them that she couldn’t explain.

She just knew she wanted -- needed? -- to be a part of it.

And so she watched them, far more often -- and more closely -- than was anything a normal person would do. But Rowan wasn’t normal, had never been normal, wouldn’t know how to be normal if you paid her. So of course it made perfect sense to her that she was stalking the three of them. How else was she going to learn about them? Because she had the sense that just asking them wasn’t going to get her anywhere.

Of course, neither did three weeks of relentless following and observing and in some cases even recording.

Rowan’s only consolation was that they didn’t know who was watching them. They knew that someone was, yeah, but they didn’t know who. Or at least, didn’t know it was _her_. She was realistic enough to know that if they found out it was her, the crazy girl who lived down the row, then there might be a problem. Not that she was crazy, but she knew other people thought she was. She knew she wasn’t normal, but crazy? Crazy was pushing it.

And at any rate, she _was_ grateful for the fact that the three men had no clue it was her.

 

Rowan knew she needed to do something besides watch the three men, but she didn't know _what_ to do. All she knew was that she needed to do something. And since she couldn't figure it out?

She followed them again.

It was nothing out of the ordinary, just following Sam to the grocery store. But she figured it nevertheless might help her figure the guys out. She'd already figured out way back at the start that it was a better idea that Sam do the grocery shopping. Because Dean couldn't shop healthy to save his life and Castiel? Well, the one time they'd sent Castiel -- and yes, she'd followed him then -- he'd spent most of the trip looking at everything in confusion before coming back with what she was pretty sure was everything _but_ what was on the list.

Sam turned and Rowan turned as well, examining the items on the shelf next to her as though she were looking for a specific something. And in a way, she was. Only the specific something she was looking for couldn't be found on a grocery store shelf.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sam moving on; she waited a beat and followed after him, taking care to toss something in her cart so it was a little less obvious that she was following him.

She'd long since memorized everyone's food preferences, so she could tell by what was going in the cart that at the moment, Sam was working on a way to pacify Dean while still eating at least marginally healthy. If he were choosing his own food and snacks, it'd be reasonably healthy items going into the cart.

Not that he wasn't currently choosing healthy-ish things, but he also happened to look vaguely resigned. Rowan figured that right there meant he was on the Dean portion of the shopping trip.

Sam turned, suddenly, and Rowan dropped down to look at something on a lower shelf, not wanting him to see her. It wouldn't be all _that_ suspicious, really -- the grocery store was close to the motel, so a lot of the residents shopped there, but she didn't want to make him suspicious.

The last thing she needed was to get caught.

 

The next to the last thing she needed was to spy on them in their own motel room, but she couldn’t resist, could never resist. It wasn’t the first time she’d done it, after all. When she saw the curtains were slightly open, she couldn’t help but stop to look in.

She didn’t know what she was expecting to see this time; all she knew was that it wasn’t Dean getting hot and heavy with a dark-haired woman. Rowan knew she should have stepped back, should have just kept on walking towards what she’d originally been planning on doing -- going to the motel office to argue yet again with the desk clerk about something being broken in her room-- but she couldn’t help staying.

It wasn’t that she found Dean appealing. Oh, alright, she did. She wasn’t blind, after all. He was hot. He really was. But he wasn’t the one she was attracted to.

That didn’t mean she wasn’t drawn to watching him, though, wasn’t fascinated by the way he moved against the dark-haired woman, the way the woman arched her back, the way she tossed her head back and moaned. Rowan hadn’t been a sheltered girl, she knew what it was to see people having sex. (She was a virgin but she’d at least seen porn, after all, even if the pornography wasn’t that appealing.) But this? This was something _entirely_ different.

And compelling. So, so compelling.

She wasn’t sure how long she stood there, only knew that it was long enough to see Dean bring the woman to climax. She whimpered softly at that, biting her lip. She wanted that. Not with Dean, but she wanted that.

She also didn’t want to get caught, dropping down to the walkway as Dean rolled onto his side and the woman stood. Holding her breath, Rowan crawled away from their room and out from under the window. When she stood, she let out her breath and moved at a fast pace back towards her room.

Her errand could wait.

 

“Someone’s watching us, Sammy,” Dean insisted. “I’m not imagining this.”

“I didn’t say you were, Dean,” Sam responded tiredly. “I’m just saying, we don’t know if it’s supernatural or just plain old human.”

He was hoping for plain old human, personally. They’d had enough supernatural oddities stalk them over the years. Not that he wanted to be stalked, of course, but a human variety stalker was infinitely easier to deal with.

“I think I know what room they’re staying in, too,” Dean pressed. “Down the way a few doors. I looked in the window one time -- “

“Dean!” Sam chided.

“ -- and it was dark, but there was someone in there. And the curtains fell back like the person had been looking out and watching something. Or someone. And had just gotten caught.”

“So what do you want to do, Dean?” Sam asked. “Just burst in there and take them down?” It wouldn’t surprise him, at least.

“Of course not,” Dean said, affronted, but in a tone that said maybe he’d been at least thinking about it. “But I think we should at least do _something_ about it. Because we’ve all had suspicions lately. And I’m tired of being suspicious about yet another thing in my life.” He was a Winchester; suspicious was practically their middle name.

“We need to figure out who it is first,” Castiel said from where he had been sitting and staring off into the distance in that “I’m trying to come up with a plan” sort of way. “We also need to find out if this person is a genuine danger or if they need some sort of help.”

Because he did not like the idea of harming an innocent but troubled individual. It went against the very core of who and what he was.

“So either we knock on the door and hope they’re home, or _we_ follow _them_ ,” Dean said succinctly.

“Neither is a particularly safe option,” Castiel replied. “But if I had to pick, I would say, follow them.” It seemed the safer of the two options to him, for some reason he couldn’t quite put a finger on.

“Following them it is, then,” Dean said. “We’ll start in the morning. One of us needs to be watching at all times, then. I’ll go find a spot to watch her room from, then.”

“Her?” Sam arched an eyebrow curiously. “How do you know it’s a her?”

“I don’t for sure,” Dean admitted. “But the glimpse I got through the window looked feminine.”

“I wonder what she wants with us,” Sam said. He knew it couldn’t be anything good -- stalkers never wanted to shake your hand and congratulate you for a job well done, after all.

“We’ll find out,” Dean said grimly. “We’ll find out no matter what.”

 

Rowan found herself in the middle of a field, which didn’t surprise her. Sometimes she felt compelled to just wander and roam and end up wherever she might end up. There was always something inside her telling her to get out, to get moving, to _run_. But it wasn’t running from something, it was more like running _to_ something.

Only she never knew what she was running to, was never able to figure it out. And so she generally wound up in the middle of a field in some random town at some random time of night.

This night was no exception.

She jammed her hands into the pockets of her jeans, shivering slightly against the cold. It wasn’t freezing, but it was cold enough that she was strongly reconsidering being there in the first place.

“Hey!”

The voice calling out to her was sharp and angry and it made Rowan flinch. She spun around anyway, nervous.

“Yeah?” Her voice shook slightly, despite an attempt at a brave front. “What do you want?”

“We want to know what _you_ want.” Dean’s voice was still sharp, still angry as Sam and Castiel came up beside him. “Why have you been stalking us for the past God knows how long?”

“Because I just feel drawn to the three of you,” Rowan said. “Him in particular.” She pointed to Castiel. “And I don’t know why.”

Castiel studied Rowan thoughtfully. “There is something about you,” he said finally. “Something that makes you special.”

“I don’t know about that,” Rowan said. “All I know is… something’s going on right now that I don’t understand in the least.”

And before any of them could say anything more, the wind picked up, whipping around them fiercely and blowing Rowan’s hair into her face. She swatted at it, trying to pull it back.

“Rowan Abernathy.”

Sam and Dean clutched at their heads, the both of them feeling as though their heads were about to explode.

Castiel, however, just stepped forward, moving to stand at Rowan’s side.

“Who are you?” he asked her, even as the voice spoke again.

“Rowan.”

“I’m here,” Rowan said. “I’m always here, every time you want to talk to me.”

Sam and Dean, meanwhile, had dropped to the ground and were busy trying not to let their heads explode. A more difficult task than one would imagine, really, and n0body would ever imagine it was an easy thing.

And yet Rowan? Was standing there like there was absolutely nothing going on whatsoever. Castiel was reasonably certain he didn’t like that, but he wasn’t sure how to feel about the entire situation. An angel was obviously talking to Rowan, but Castiel couldn’t figure out who it was and they didn’t seem inclined to tell.

That was bad. Some of the angels were nearly as manipulative as demons. He could only hope the angel in question was not one of them.

Rowan turned from the direction of the mysterious voice to Castiel, a manic glint in her eyes. “The angel is like you,” she said. “I’ve felt there was something different about you from the moment we first actually met, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I can now, though.”

She smiled, and it was both beautiful and terrifying. “You’re an angel, too.”

A disembodied laugh, before a figure emerged from the shadows at the edge of the clearing. An unassuming enough figure, a young man in his early twenties or so Castiel estimated. An attractive vessel; he wondered if the angel had used that pleasing visage to lure Rowan in.

He had his answer a second later, watching Rowan look over to the angel.

“So that’s what you look like,” she said, her voice almost breathless. But at the same time, she remained close to Castiel. He could not figure out why but he was not going to argue. If he had to protect her from this angel -- and he would do so in a heartbeat because no human, especially one who could stand to hear an angel’s voice free from harm, deserved to be harmed.

“Who _are_ you?” Castiel pressed, moving himself not at all subtly between Rowan and the other angel.

The only response was a simple, beatific smile that wasn’t quite a smirk. “That doesn’t matter. All that matters is that she can hear me without her head popping like a grape. That could prove quite useful.”

“It could,” Castiel allowed. “But humans are not to be used at our whims. They make their own decisions, live their own lives. This woman is not yours to command.”

“Nor is she yours,” came the sharp counter. “Though you could, were you inclined, I think. She seems to be quite attracted to you. In love with you, even, I would venture to guess. Pity, really, a human in love with an angel never works out well in the end.”

Castiel would puzzle that out later; at the moment, he was far more interested in getting the angel to go away so that Sam and Dean would not explode. It would be a shame if that happened.

It was Rowan who solved that problem, in the end. She turned to the angel fully. “Go,” she said, her voice shaky but with more than a hint of command. “Leave. We do not need you here.”

The angel arched an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

“ _Go_.” There was no mistaking the command in her voice now, the command bordering on anger.

Castiel was intrigued. This woman, slight and unassuming, had the power to command angels. Or at least, to give _a_ command to _one_ angel. Because the angel, whoever it was, let out a loud snarl and vanished before Castiel could say another word.

With that, Sam and Dean were gasping for breath. “Dude, what the _hell_?” Dean asked, sitting up after a long and very agonizing moment in which he wondered if his head was still trying to rip itself off his body.

“You just heard an angel’s true voice,” Rowan replied.

Dean groaned. He should’ve known.

“You!” Sam looked at Rowan, wide-eyed with surprise. “Why weren’t you writhing on the ground in pain like Dean and I were?”

“Because I…” She looked to Castiel. “I can hear the true voice of an angel. Is that right?” She’d never known what the mysterious voice was, only that it belonged to something incredibly powerful. But it had been her friend throughout the years, or at least something -- someone? -- who supported her.

But _had_ it really supported her? What had it been _doing_ in her life? She wanted to know, didn’t know how to find out.

She could, however, ask the one person in the situation who might have the faintest inkling of a clue.

“What did he want?” she asked. “What did he want in my life all these years?”

“I do not know,” Castiel replied. “If I were to venture a guess, it would be that you are important to the greater scheme of things in some way. This would be backed up by the fact that you can hear an angel’s true voice without suffering the way ordinary humans do.”

“I need a drink,” Dean muttered as he got to his feet. “This entire thing is just a gigantic pain in my ass and you, lady -- “ He looked at Rowan. “ -- have been a pain my ass, in all our asses, for months. What the hell, stalking us like that?”

“I didn’t mean to be,” Rowan said, her voice apologetic and a little smaller than usual because really, it _hadn’t_ been her intention. “It was just… because of him.” She nodded towards Castiel. “I recognized something in him and I wanted to know more and I knew there was no way I could find out just by asking you. So I had to do the only thing I could think of. Was it a good idea? No, probably not. But haven’t you ever done something stupid and reckless?”

“In my line of work, stupid and reckless gets me killed,” Dean said. He wasn’t going to give Rowan the satisfaction of admitting that yes, he had done stupid and reckless things before. “But I _have_ had times where I haven’t known what to do about something that defies explanation.”

“So you understand.”

As much as Dean was loathe to admit it, he could understand _that_ much.

“You would do best to move on,” Castiel said to Rowan. “To walk away and forget any of this ever happened.”

“How can I?” Rowan asked. “My life has been completely changed as a result of tonight. How can I possibly walk away and forget?”

Castiel didn’t have an answer. He didn’t like that, not having an answer. But he wasn’t surprised. The angels were a mysterious lot, even amongst their own ranks. It was entirely possible that this was an angel he had met once and forgotten, since there were so many of them, and it was also entirely possible that this angel had something dangerous in mind. They were angels, but that didn’t make them immune to plots and trickery.

“I do not know,” he said finally. “I wish I had some helpful words for you. But all I have is the advice to run. Run far, run fast, and hope that you are never targeted again.”

“That’s it?” There was anger in Rowan’s voice now. “You’re an angel, too, and all you can do is tell me to run? There’s nothing you can do to protect me?”

Castiel just looked at her helplessly. “I am truly sorry, Rowan. And before we send you off, the Winchesters and myself will do our best to arm you with the knowledge to save yourself. It is only right that we do so. But there is no actual protection that I could give.”

Rowan stood there, twisting a lock of hair nervously around her finger. She had to handle this herself, then. Once armed with whatever knowledge the three she’d spent so many weeks watching could give her, she would have to handle this herself.

That sucked. A lot.

But she could do it. It wouldn’t be easy, but she could do it. After all, she’d spent most of her life taking care of herself -- thanks to her absentee parents, who had loved her but not really been there for her -- so this would be nothing new.

She would do this. She would throw herself into it and come out the other side stronger, just like every other little moment of adversity in her life, few though they had been. She might not look it, but she _was_ strong. Stronger than almost everybody would think. Surely even this nameless angel wouldn’t expect anything from Rowan except eccentricity and a lack of logic and downright quirkiness like the time she’d moved halfway across the country just because she could. If she had to, in this case, she would use that to her advantage. Because this angel thought he knew her.

The simple fact of the matter was, however, that the only one who knew Rowan Abernathy was herself.


End file.
